Corporations Entering World of Blogs (AP)

Grok Headline matches for Corporations Entering World of Blogs (AP)

Commercial bl0gs entering Finland

Commercial bl0gs entering Finland 04/08/2005 06:39 PM
My my, what an interesting week this has been: First, Blogilista goes commercial, and now Pirkka-magazine has launched a number of commercial blogs. The Finnish blogosphere reacts with violent distrust and confusion.

I see no problem. These are clearly blogs, simply because th e only meaningful definition for the world blog is based on form, not content. They're not lying about their affiliation. They publish polished content. In fact, I find it wonderful that a media publisher dares to go and try and embrace the new media. They even publish Atom feeds for all blogs! Way!

However, entering the blogosphere may be more difficult than just dumping Movabletype on your magazine web site: people will look at these blogs. They will discuss. They will find crap on them (if there's any). They will write about it. And it's difficult to ignore them, if you want to keep your credibility. Other bloggers will call your bullshit - and very likely, someone in that bunch is at least equal in writing skills and more knowledgeable on the subject than you. And they know it.

Now the question is how much integrity Pirkka wants to have: do they just want to publish news articles in a blog format - or do they really want to go full out and really try to embrace the dialogue that comes with the format?

You see, whatever else blogs may be, they work best as a personal media. You need to let people write with their own voice, not just copying material from others - even if you have all the rights to do so. It's the power and bane of the format; a personal touch creates reader loyalty, but it also means that you have to get involved in your writing - "laittaa itsensä likoon", as the Finns say. And that is not easy.

Welcome to the crowd! I'm happy you're here, anyway. People will grumble, but there's always room for one more in the jacuzzi.

(A quick hint to Pirkka writers: Read http://www.corporateblogging .info/, and Scoble's Corporat e Blogging Manifesto. Understand. Internalize. And stop posting articles from one person under the name of another... That simply takes away credibility from the author.)

(And a quick other hint to people who complain about these being on blogilista.fi: get a clue. Really. Would you stop using a phone book simply because it contains company phone numbers, or stop using Google because it's *gasp* a profit-making company? That's exactly what Blogilista.fi is - an index of blogs, nothing more. It ain't your personal blogospheric community where people live happily and go to the woods to get undressed and hug each other in a blogoslavic überbliss. If you don't like the direction they're taking, learn to use RSS and site feeds, and make your own personal bloglist.

Blogging in Finland is finally growing up. The hype around blogging will cease in a year or two, and hopefully we then can better understand what the media is and what one can do with it. And then we can get back to the really important thing: writing. Writing about your dog, or your political views, or celebrity divorces, or company products, or food, or your sex life, or whatever pleases you. Some bloggers will gain prestige; some bloggers will become influential; some bloggers will make many people laugh; some bloggers will make many people weep. Some will be completely ignored. Most will just for

...

You're Entering a World of Lebowski

You're Entering a World of Lebowski 08/08/2004 05:41 PM
Nowadays, quoting from Joel and Ethan Coen's 1998 hyperintellectual stoner noir bowling comedy "The Big Lebowski" earns you coolness points in widely disparate circles.

Nintendo Entering Online World???

Nintendo Entering Online World??? 08/19/2004 06:05 AM
Indiantelevision.com - Thu Aug 19, 10:32 am GMT

best bl0gs in the world

best bl0gs in the world 12/15/2003 10:33 PM
2003 Blogger Awards .. results .. Kevin

wizbangblog.com/archives/001317.php
track this site | 6 links

PR, Blogs and the Evolving Media World

PR, Blogs and the Evolving Media World 07/12/2004 03:50 PM
An online event called Global PR Blog Week is under way. They've posted an interview today with Jay Rosen, who (blush) has kind words for my book. I'm busy answering questions for an interview they'll post later in the week.

Real World cast member bl0gs about
indecency bust

Real World cast member bl0gs about
indecency bust 05/07/2004 01:39 PM
pulls a pee wee, and then owns up to it on his weblog. Powered by TypePad!

Blogs, message boards draw world closer
after tragedy (SiliconValley.com)

Blogs, message boards draw world closer
after tragedy (SiliconValley.com) 12/31/2004 02:34 PM
SiliconValley.com - When the killer tsunamis surged over Asian coastlines Sunday, communications consultant Peter Griffin struggled with how he could help from his home in Mumbai, India.

Webl0gs, Inc., World’s Largest Blog
Publisher, Announces Three New Blogs on
Satellite Radio (droxy.com), Flash
(flashinsider.com), and SAS
(sas.webl0gsinc.com).

Webl0gs, Inc., World’s Largest Blog
Publisher, Announces Three New Blogs on
Satellite Radio (droxy.com), Flash
(flashinsider.com), and SAS
(sas.webl0gsinc.com). 12/17/2004 06:44 PM
Weblogs, Inc., The World’s Largest Blog Publisher, Announces the Launch of 64th through 66th Weblogs, focused on Satellite and Digital Radio (droxy.com), Flash (flashinsider.com), SAS (sas.weblogsinc.com). [PRWEB Dec 15, 2004]

Vasanth Dharmaraj?s Blogs - World?s
biggest rural wireless network in India!
[my bl0g on dot net, java, eclipse,
linux, formula one, xbox gaming? ]

Vasanth Dharmaraj?s Blogs - World?s
biggest rural wireless network in India!
[my bl0g on dot net, java, eclipse,
linux, formula one, xbox gaming? ] 08/17/2004 05:59 AM
World's biggest rural wireless network in India!: "Kerala one of the southern states in India has launched wireless broadband connectivity to rural areas where land lines or cellular phones are not available. The Kerala State IT Mission Department has setup 550 internet kiosks covering 3500 square kilometers of land. The services ...

Someone might be entering soon

Someone might be entering soon 06/10/2004 09:04 PM
Yeah yeah, I realize it's been a while since I've written something intelligent. Lots of stuff going on, lots of...

Corporations Still Not Cutting Web Pie

Corporations Still Not Cutting Web Pie 06/30/2004 06:02 AM
Corporations Still Not Cutting Web Pie By Jim Wagner
http:/ /www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3373151

The Web sites of too many Fortune 100 companies in the United States don't take customers seriously, an upcoming report by research and consulting firm The Customer Respect Group concludes. The 2004 Online Customer Respect Study shows that while companies like Microsoft (No. 1) and Hewlett-Packard (No. 2) performed very well across the board, most had inadequate privacy, operational or security measures in place to reassure customers. The study evaluates the top 100 U.S. companies in six categories -- simplicity, responsiveness, transparency, principles, attitude and privacy -- and elicits end-user feedback on their experiences of visits to the Web sites. Grading is done on a 0 (worst) to 10 (best) scale. Roger Fairchild, president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based consulting firm, said he finds it amazing that after three years of publishing report results, companies still don't take their online sites seriously.

Compassionate Corporations

Compassionate Corporations 12/31/2004 02:33 PM
Many U.S. companies dig deep to help tsunami victims in Southeast Asia.

Entering CasualSpace...

Entering CasualSpace... 01/07/2004 02:12 PM
I just had another transforming telecommunications experience. Again, Joi Ito was involved. Joi and I were typing at each other over the Net using Apple's iChat AV. I've never liked Internet chat. I don't like having to type that fast. So, at a certain point, I asked him whether he'd used the audio capacities that are built into iChat AV. I hadn't. A moment later we were conversing by voice through our computers. Despite the fact that Joi is presently in his country house outside of Tokyo and I'm at my condo in Salt Lake, it sounded like he was in the room with me. There was no discernible latency or loss of fidelity. For awhile, we talked as though we were on the phone, and I marveled at being able to conduct a zero-cost trans-Pacific call. (Of course, there's nothing particularly new about voice over IP. But it's never been so stupidly easy to set up, in my personal experience, as it is with iChat AV. Also, it never sounded this good before.) The really interesting shift occurred as we drifted back to what we'd been doing before we started chatting, leaving the audio channel open as we'd did so. We could hear each other typing. One of my daughters entered the room and spoke to me. Joi heard her and said hello. They had a brief conversation, their first since she was a little girl. Joi and I returned our e-mail. I wanted to set up an account on Technorati and broke in to ask him how to do it. He walked me through the process. There were other occasional interjections. I could hear the sounds of construction going on in his house. For a long time, it was as though we were working in the same room, each of us alone with his endeavors and yet... together. Though half a world away. This feels significant to me. Even over shorter distances, people rarely think of phone calls as being so casually cheap that one would simply leave the connection open for ambient telepresence and occasional conversation. To create shared spaces that span the planet, and to do so whenever you feel like it, and to leave them unpurposefully in place for hours, is not something people have done very often before. The next step is to make those shared spaces larger, so that multiple people can inhabit the same auditory zone, entering and leaving it as though it were a coffee house. This will change the way people live. Big deal, you think. You can do this with conference calls now. But you don't. Conference calls are expensive and unstable. The sound quality usually sucks if you're using a speaker phone. I think this is different. It certainly felt different to me. I had the same shiver of the New that I got years ago the first time I ever used telnet and realized that I could get a hard disks to spin in any number of computers thousands of miles away just by entering a few keystrokes. Eventually, Joi had to leave to attend to other business his distant part of Meatspace. We collapsed our huge virtual room into nothing. I went out on my balcony. In the snowy garden below, I watched a deer chase a huge raccoon into the bushes....

Corporations Never Pay Taxes

Corporations Never Pay Taxes 04/16/2004 09:01 AM
Just about everybody remains agog at news that U.S. companies aren't paying income tax.

M.I.A. is, well, MIA due to visa
troubles while entering US

M.I.A. is, well, MIA due to visa
troubles while entering US 03/17/2005 03:55 AM
Xeni Jardin: Following up on last week's post about the Sri Lankan sensation who plays bongo with her lingo, Boing Boing reader Pablos says: "M.I.A. was scheduled to perform at Chop Suey in Seattle tonight. Apparently she is having some kind of Visa trouble and her show has been cancelled. "

Some speculate the incident may relate to her father's affiliation with a Sri Lankan rebel group designated as a terrorist organization by the US. No news on her site or newsfeeds yet, but she's also scheduled to play at SXSW this week.
See also this extensive Pitchfork interview with Ms. Maya Arulpragasam. It says, among other things, that "bloggers love her." Link (thanks john martin and High-C)

Previously: MIA for intergalactic overlord

Corporations responce to AIDS

Corporations responce to AIDS 12/02/2003 01:10 AM
Here's a pragmatic look at why companies like De Beers and British Petroleum seek to combat the spread of HIV. Can this be an example of how an act of self-interest can also be an act of humanitarianism?

IBM creates a Google for corporations

IBM creates a Google for corporations 06/27/2004 06:22 AM
San Jose Mercury News Jun 27 2004 10:38AM GMT

Study Says Bluetooth Entering the
Mainstream

Study Says Bluetooth Entering the
Mainstream 05/05/2004 05:12 PM
BrightHand May 5 2004 9:06PM GMT

Open Source For Corporations: Set Up A
$30,000 Gate

Open Source For Corporations: Set Up A
$30,000 Gate 04/12/2004 02:10 PM
While many in the tech industry always seem focused too much on companies that produce technology, there isn't as much interest in how everyday companies use technology to improve their own bottom line. There's a new "co-op" targeted at large companies that use technology as a way to improve their business, but who are sick of spending so much time and money on customized software for their business. Think of it as open source software with a $30,000 gate. Members of the co-op pay $30,000 per year to join, and then can freely share software they've built with others in the co-op. The benefits, in theory, are access to the other software from other companies, and the fact that some others within the co-op will contribute to and improve on software that's been donated. Of course, companies could just open source this software (since it's obviously focused on software that isn't designed to give the companies a competitive advantage). However, it seems like they figure that the $30,000 gate will keep the level of the software included higher and more focused on corporate uses. Also, it's much more likely that companies will be willing to spend their own engineering resources on applications that go into this program than on fully open source projects - since many managers still have a fear of open source. The article suggests that this could be disruptive to companies that design custom applications for corporate users. There is still a question of seeding the field with enough applications, but it sounds like they've already convinced some large companies (like Best Buy) to join and toss some of their corporate software into the pot.

Corporations that miss the joke and just
repeat the lie

Corporations that miss the joke and just
repeat the lie 02/12/2004 12:35 PM
newmediazero Feb 12 2004 5:06PM GMT

XP Has No Legs - 80% of Corporations
Reject Microsoft XP

XP Has No Legs - 80% of Corporations
Reject Microsoft XP 04/13/2004 02:26 PM
"...a study in December found that 80 percent of companies still have some machines running Windows 95 or Windows 98...39 percent of desktops were running either Windows 95 or Windows 98.".

Entering credit card numbers

Entering credit card numbers 02/10/2004 02:44 PM
Bruce Tognazzini writes in his Ask Tog column Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line: "...Why can’t I input my credit card number the way it appears on the card? Why do I have to suck the extra spaces out, making it all but impossible to re-scan it for errors? We’re talking three spaces here, three bytes." (via Usability Views) I will quite often try to see if a credit card number field gives me enough room to enter it with spaces. If it does, I will then delete the spaces because I know so many places can't handle them. Any of you web programmers out there, tell me you couldn't write code to strip three spaces out of a credit card number? We're talking regular expressions 101 here. In a similar vein, I once asked a programmer I was working with to allow social security numbers to accept both no spaces or hyphens, and they told me the code to take hyphens out was easier than the code insisting the user enter it without hyphens....

MiMail worm uses ZIP files to rampage
across corporations

MiMail worm uses ZIP files to rampage
across corporations 11/01/2003 06:21 AM

New Sales Strategies for UK Companies
Entering US Market

New Sales Strategies for UK Companies
Entering US Market 04/04/2005 04:15 AM
“How to Quickly and Cost-effectively Enter the U.S. Market” – Georgia, USA alliance to conduct U.K. Workshops on Selling in the United States in April. [PRWEB Apr 4, 2005]

Romanian Team Entering X-Prize
competition

Romanian Team Entering X-Prize
competition 09/12/2004 03:47 AM

Nanotube Non-Volatile Memory Entering
Production

Nanotube Non-Volatile Memory Entering
Production 06/08/2004 02:10 PM

How Corporations Became Culturally
Dysfunctional and Why Simple Solutions
Won't Fix Them

How Corporations Became Culturally
Dysfunctional and Why Simple Solutions
Won't Fix Them 03/30/2005 06:16 PM

The Idea: We've already been told that corporations are psychopathic. There's evidence they are also culturally dysfunctional, an inappropriate construct to do what they were designed to do, or could do. But because they're part of a complex system, there are no easy or imminent fixes. Joel Bakan's book (and film, which will be shown on the CBC next week BTW) The Corporation, argues that corporations have evolved into psychopathic entities. But their reputation is not just one of anti-social behaviour. Corporations are also seen by many as lumbering, inflexible, un-innovative creatures. I thought it might be worth exploring why this is so. Recently I've been studying and writing about the difference between complicated systems (those that lend themselves to cause-and-effect analysis) and complex systems (where there are so many variables the best you can do is look for meaningful patterns and correlations). Corporations were initially designed as a 'shell' that would allow a group of workers to collectively raise capital, add and delete members easily, and, later, to protect workers who were associated with partners who engaged in criminal, negligent or fraudulent activities from liability for those partners' actions. The concept of 'shareholding' met these requirements. The interests of shareholders, initially the workers in the organization, were subordinated to the interests of creditors -- the worker-shareholders 'shared' what was left after the corporation's debts were paid. Several consequences of 'shareholdings' were probably unanticipated. Some worker-shareholders could easily be given more shares than others, to reflect a greater time or financial commitment to the enterprise. And some workers, and even managers, could simply be treated as another class of creditor -- paid a fixed return on their 'investment' of time in the organization, but given no 'shares' in the profits at all. And if some investors were willing to take the risks, they could be given shares in return for a cash infusion in the company, even if they played no active role in the corporation at all. And since they were inessential to the operations of the company, why not allow these passive shareholders to use these shares as collateral for loans, or even trade their shares with others, creating a kind of 'stock market' that would allow the rich gentry with lots of money they could afford to lose, to gamble with each other on which of these passive shareholdings would pay 'dividends' and which would be useful only as wallpaper? The rest, as they say, is history. Corporations are no longer run for the well-being of their workers, but to maximize the profits paid to their mostly-absentee shareholders. Many corporations have no workers at all -- they are merely 'holding companies' that own shares of other corporations. Shareholders feel no responsibility to the workers, the people who generate the value of the shares, and whose wages are increasingly unconnected to the value they produce, as the value is all paid out to the shareholders. What has emerged as a result is hierarchy. Managers are hired by the shareholders to employ as few workers as possible and pay those workers as little as possible, and to provide the fewest and most inexpensive benefits and facilities possible, so that more of the profits are left for the shareholders. Managers are therefore remunerated in inverse proportion to the well-being of the workers and the communities in which they live. Disparity between the well-being of workers and that of shareholders grows without limit, with managers as the 'middle-men' to ensure that this happens and to keep workers in line. The physical slavery of early civilization, enforced by warlords and feudal fiefs, is hence replaced by economic wage-slavery, enforced by management. Not surprisingly, workers who might have otherwise been motivated to work hard out of self-interest now seek ways to do the least work possible for their wages, and counter the force of shareholders with their own self-organized bodies, unions. The education system is enlisted to convince workers not born into the privileged elite that if they work hard they too can become managers, and the hierarchy is made more multi-leveled to provide the illusion of 'progress' towards that goal. If the corporation is large enough this fraud can be perpetrated almost indefinitely, as workers spend a lifetime chasing the carrots up increasingly steep (and increasingly handsomely rewarded) steps of the ladder towards management. And some workers can even be given a token number of shares in the company, to bamboozle them into believeing that they are also real shareholders in the organization. In each industry, the largest corporations, while still feigning competitiveness, merge, acquire and otherwise band together in oligopolies, acting in the best interests of shareholders to eliminate real competition so that upstarts who share the rewards of their labour more equitably with workers and with customers can gain no foothold in the market. Advertising is introduced to provide the illusion of real choice and competition. As we all know, however, pyramid schemes are unsustainable, and this one is no exception. Given enough time, workers begin to realize that the cost of living is rising faster than their wages and that their standard of living is actually falling while that of shareholders is rising astronomically. Financial corporations, seeing an opportunity to push the crumbling pyramid a bit further, start offering huge amounts of credit to workers (using deceptive advertising to understate the cost of this credit), so that workers can 'afford' to buy ever more of the overpriced crap the corporations are producing. Corporations turn to outsourcing and offshoring in the endless quest to reduce costs so that shareholders' wealth can keep rising even though the market is saturated and debt levels are sky-high. Governments and media are bought by the now obscenely-wealthy shareholders and paid to parrot the fraud and hype of 'free' trade, 'free' markets and globalization, to even further deregulate, subsidize and undertax corporations, and to pass laws so that that corporations cannot be sued by workers but workers can be sued by corporations. If the growth stumbles, the stock market, which is now a Ponzi scheme that demands endless double-digit annual profit increases, will collapse, taking the whole economic house of cards built up around it with it. The result is that today corporations are huge, anti-democratic, unconcerned about (or even averse to) the well-being of employees and the health of the environment, market-distorting and addicted to growth. In short, they are culturally dysfunctional -- working at odds with the best interests of people. Note that there was no conspiracy here, no master plan to make the lowly medieval corporation designed to allow workers to raise capital funds collectively into today's Frankenstein monster. It has been an evolution, an emergence set in motion by unexpected consequences of the creation of the useful concept of shareholdings, and then affected over centuries by thousands of social, political, economic and cultural events and behaviours, from divine right to the New Deal, from the 19th-century error in US law that gave American and then all corporations the rights of personhood, to the end of physical slavery, the dislocation of labour in the world wars, the emancipation of women and the beginnings of the Two-Income Trap. In other words, cultural evolution is a complex system, and to the extent it gives rise to dysfunctional entities like the modern corporation we cannot expect simplistic solutions (e.g. "rein in corporate power" and "put people before profit"), as desirable as such solutions may look in theory, to work in the real world. The reason they won't work is not because 'they' have all the money and power, it's because we, the workers, as integral parts of the evolution that has given rise (usually peacefully, with the worker massacres of the robber barons and Great Depression riots being notable exceptions) to the emergence of the modern corporation, are complicit in that evolution. It couldn't have happened without us. Complex systems, we learn from history, cannot be changed quickly or simply. The anti-corporatist, anti-globalization movement has demonstrated that. There is no panacea in legislation, new economy movements, or rioting in the streets. The effects of complex systems are not simply 'problems' that can be 'solved'. Only if and when enough of us, as individual actors in this system, change our behaviours in such a way that collectively we begin to change the dynamics of the system, will those changes ripple through to the way corporations behave and the impact they have on our lives and our well-being. Barring a crisis on the scale of the Great Depression, those individual behaviour changes are unlikely to come soon, to be coordinated or even to be subject to coordinated effort. The end of slavery and the emancipation of women and the approval of the Kyoto Accord (and, as I described in yesterday's post, the end of capital punishment in Europe and Canada but not in the US) were the emergents of millions of unpredictable and individual changes in perception brought about by millions of individual events. There is good news and bad news here. The good news is that, while we are responsible for the emergence of the modern dysfunctional corporation (and all the other endemic social, political, environmental and economic ills of our time and culture), we should not feel guilty about it. Organization and activism are extremely unlikely to change these things, because they are evolutions of complex systems, not simple cause-and-effect 'problems'. Just becoming aware of these things and understanding the need for change and acting individually with modest changes in our behaviour (mostly things readers of this blog have probably already done) is really all you can do, and the effect of us individually changing our behaviours could, in time, precipitate positive change to the whole system. The whole of a complex system is nothing more, or less, than the sum of the parts. You just have to let go of the illusion that anyone is (or even could be) in control and enjoy the ride. If you'll pardon the mixed metaphor, when we reach the tipping point, the earth will move. The bad news is that it's futile to try to speed up the process. There's a reason your instincts probably told you that getting out the vote for Kerry was a worthwhile effort (it almost worked -- the tipping point was close), but protesting against globalization was not. There's a reason your instincts might have told you not to even bother voting for Kerry -- when it's time, it's time. People change slowly. That's our nature. Unfortunately, that means that with our impact on this planet being so massive and accelerating at such a phenomenal rate, it is increasingly unlikely that we can change direction quickly enough to avert catastrophe. So my new paradox is this: The more I learn about 'complex thinking' the happier I am about just blogging and talking and spreading ideas and information as my part to make the world a better place, and the less guilt-ridden I am about not doing more to 'save the world' -- and the less hopeful I am that it will save itself in time.

Microsoft may be illegally entering
search market, says US

Microsoft may be illegally entering
search market, says US 04/15/2004 03:56 AM
Silicon.com Apr 15 2004 7:53AM GMT

Tech corporations donate computers to
Oregon 4-H program

Tech corporations donate computers to
Oregon 4-H program 05/05/2004 09:21 PM
OSU Extension May 6 2004 1:20AM GMT

"The University of Georgia is entering a
new phase of its WAGZone experiment"

"The University of Georgia is entering a
new phase of its WAGZone experiment" 01/03/2004 07:07 PM

George Carlin Entering Drug Rehab Clinic
(AP)

George Carlin Entering Drug Rehab Clinic
(AP) 12/27/2004 03:50 PM
AP - Comedian George Carlin is entering a drug rehabilitation facility to shake his dependence on wine and a painkiller.

Department of Homeland Security Prevents
Terrorist from Entering the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Prevents
Terrorist from Entering the U.S. 09/25/2004 11:32 AM
As we all know, since September 11, 2001 the U.S. has been much more vigilant in defending itself against terrorist attacks.  In addition to bombing the shit out of the Middle East, we have also established the Department of Homeland Security whose responsibility it is to defend us from terrorists. They have so far done a stellar job, as the U.S. has yet to be hit by another terrorist attack.  But the ever-vigilant Department of Homeland Security is not resting on its laurels. Recently, they prevented the terrorist supporter Yusef Islam from entering the United States.

Hacker pleads guilty to entering N.Y.
Times computers

Hacker pleads guilty to entering N.Y.
Times computers 01/08/2004 08:35 PM
SiliconValley.com Jan 8 2004 8:12PM ET

Of the world's 100 largest economic
entities, 51 are now corporations and 49
are countries (2000)

Of the world's 100 largest economic
entities, 51 are now corporations and 49
are countries (2000) 06/11/2004 01:52 AM
"Of the world's 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries" .. economics

corporations.org/system/top100.html
track this site | 5 links

"Of the world's 100 largest economic
entities, 51 are now corporations and 49
are countries (2000)"

"Of the world's 100 largest economic
entities, 51 are now corporations and 49
are countries (2000)" 06/11/2004 05:57 PM

Computer system picks out new words,
phrases entering English language

Computer system picks out new words,
phrases entering English language 12/20/2003 03:55 AM
National Post Dec 20 2003 3:39AM ET

Boston.com / News / Blogs / David
Weinberger bl0gs the Democratic National
Convention on Boston.com: Blogging
crosses over

Boston.com / News / Blogs / David
Weinberger bl0gs the Democratic National
Convention on Boston.com: Blogging
crosses over 07/29/2004 05:21 PM
fun post about the blogger breakfast

boston.com/news/blogs/dnc/2004/07/blogging_crosse.html
track this site | 3 links

Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different
From External Blogs?

Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different
From External Blogs? 03/29/2005 07:22 AM
Internal Blogs: So, Are They Different From External Blogs?
http://www.llrx.com/features/internalblogs.htm

Dennis Hamilton shares his experience with launching a blog behind the corporate firewall, and suggests parameters that focus on content value to ensure its successful implementation. This is an feature article appearing in the March edition of Sabrina I. Pacifici's LLRX.com.

Reading bl0gs, writing bl0gs

Reading bl0gs, writing bl0gs 06/06/2004 06:45 PM
Kansas City Star (subscription),MO-9 hours ago• BlogPulse.com offers a blog search engine. Just type in keywords of interest. Or use Google to search for “blog” and keywords of interest. ...
Grok Description matches for Corporations Entering World of Blogs (AP)
GrokA matches for Corporations Entering World of Blogs (AP)

Hosting Company Affinity Internet Names
Winner of Mini Cooper Giveaway

Hosting Company Affinity Internet Names
Winner of Mini Cooper Giveaway 09/08/2004 04:27 PM
The Hosting News Sep 8 2004 8:40PM GMT

Trip Hawkins starts a game company for
mobile phones

Trip Hawkins starts a game company for
mobile phones 04/12/2004 11:33 AM
Here's an article I wrote about Electronic Arts and 3D0 founder Trip Hawkin's new mobile games company, Digital Chocolate. Link

Is Lilly About to Bloom?

Is Lilly About to Bloom? 04/18/2005 02:43 PM
Two new diabetes products could add a little punch to this drugmaker's top line.

Elan Teams Up With Lilly

Elan Teams Up With Lilly 06/14/2004 02:49 PM
The companies' manufacturing agreement may be more of a positive sign for Eli Lilly than it is for Elan.

Relief Pitch for Eli Lilly

Relief Pitch for Eli Lilly 04/15/2005 01:07 PM
A ruling upholding the Zyprexa patent is good news for Lilly, but promising drugs in the pipeline are even more encouraging.

Eli Lilly Turns to Japan

Eli Lilly Turns to Japan 03/24/2005 02:40 PM
The company's move to focus more resources on Japan makes good sense.

A Monster Drug for Lilly?

A Monster Drug for Lilly? 06/30/2004 11:27 AM
The drug giant files NDA for its experimental new drug for diabetics.

Fluffy Bunnies and Lilly pads

Fluffy Bunnies and Lilly pads 05/22/2004 08:21 AM

Lilly pads in the Helsinki Botanical Garden taken on XP2 film.

Well, the blogosphere experienced a collective slashdot moment over the past week with the sound and the fury over the news that the MovableType software decided to change licenses and pricing. While I read quite a lot more than I probably should have, I wasn't going to mention it here at all except that I think there are some valid concerns being drowned out by the angry rhetoric out there that resembles a playground where the popular kids still call the shots with the only discernable difference being that now they want far more than your lunch money. Amidst all the rage and rebuttals there are some older and calmer voices who have some interesting and intelligent things to say.

Perhaps the most surprising person to discuss the MT licensing switch is Alan Burlison. Alan is the British version of Jarkko as he is taciturn and shrewd with his opinions, particularly with technology. Alan's no freeloader as he has been an active perl developer for quite a few years, is largely responsible for all the perl in Solaris and helped CPAN get 3 free enterprise class systems from Sun for the CPAN search engine and other sites. He took particular notice of and offense to the original source being pulled from the 6A sites and the poorly written license. Phi l Ringnalda also takes apart the license and this blog does the economics of the backlash. Shelley also has a heartfelt rant which, in spite of the vitriolic tone, is spot on. Licensing and copyright probably make my eyes glaze over faster than Dan Sugalski talking about the innards of the VMS kernel. There's nothing like getting an email from RMS over your morning coffee trying to stir the pot about licenses and the lack thereof on CPAN. It's not a great way to kick of your morning but, in the end, licenses and copyright in a litigation happy society do matter quite a lot, even if you think that there's no possible way to enforce them.

In an age where quite a few open source projects have made a profitable business out of offering service, support, consulting and training for their software, TypePad made, and still makes, a lot of sense in the 'everybody has got to eat' mantra that seems to be the most popular defense of the MT announcement. There is also corporate licensing of the software. I doubt anyone is actually going to starve at 6A, especially in America, so that's a bit of a red herring. So, too, is the argument that we're all a bunch of freeloaders. A lot of us are involved in open source in one form or another and have given our time freely to projects without compensation in the form of cash. Many of us are not zealots in the service of RMS or the FSF and actually buy software and shareware on a regular basis. We're a bunch of people who liked the software enough at one point to use it, continue to use it, donate a little money and now find all that good will replaced by a positively awful license and a fee schedule that seems all about screwing the very people who put them on the map to begin with.

In the end, it's just software that we can choose to use or not use, this is the one true shining light in the sea of words spawned by this whole debacle. However, it's rather galling when some call the reaction 'childish'. A lot of the opinions defending 6A against the onslaught sound eerily like the 'you're either with us or against us' anti-terrorism chant. We're not against them, but people tend to react negetively when they feel like they're being given only one option, one that is radically different than the one expected. I started using MT because Nat Torkington said he liked it and because the server I have my blog on also hosts a number of CPAN websites which already had mod_perl[obviously :)] but I didn't really want to wedge mod_php into it. Sure, I read the license and I lived with the 'free enough' attitude since it was reasonable to assume that they'd go the same way as a few of our friends have who are making 6 figures a year by selling training and support for their perl products. It comes down to a few sticking points that lead a thinking person to believe that there are parts to this story that we're still missing.

• What happened to the 2.6X source code? If we're all still welcome to continue using it for free, where is it? A new user who wants to install MT today will be forced to use MT3 which is still a development version.
• More than a few developers and coders on the beta test of MT3 have quietly registered a feeling of betrayal since they weren't informed of the license update any sooner than the rest of us. I don't know whether to think of that as an implication of sneaky doings behind the scenes or just a continuing pattern of infrequent communication.
• Aside from minor improvements in spam management, MT3's only new feature would appear to be the license which, after more than a year of promising the addition of some of the typepad features, is a huge disappointment.

These 3 things are primarily what is driving a lot of the discontent which put 6A into a reactive instead of proactive stance. Perhaps we should think that they do need the money to eat since I'd really like to believe that the license wasn't written by or checked by a practising copyright lawyer. But how could a company of smart people bungle this so incredibly badly? I mean, the Aw shucks, gee whiz kind of explanation is endearing like a fuzzy bunny, but if we're going to cough up $150 for a bit of software shouldn't we expect something a lot more polished and professional? When you ask people for $150 for your software and give them a license it's no longer about friends and fuzzy bunnies, it's a binding contract that deserves a lot more care and respect than it seems to be getting. It's a tough way to learn that it's essential to hire business professionals. Programmers always like to think they can be sysadmins, too. Well, at least until the system melts down at 4am and they've no clue what to do. Programmers always like to learn things the hard way I think.

Watching and waiting to see what happens is a good plan, but the WordPress application is really generating a lot of enthusiasm. There have been dozens more well done posts around the net about transitioning to another software package, PhotoMatt seems to be doing a fine job of rounding up many of them, including an amazing WordPress blog in Hindi. There's also a nicely done Blog software breakdown for people wanting to comparison shop. I'm going to wait another week or three and see what problems other people encounter and then move to WordPress, even if it is PHP. If it turns out that I wind up using WP, I'll even donate $150 to the project just on principle.

Lilly Said to Know of Prozac Risk in
'80s (AP)

Lilly Said to Know of Prozac Risk in
'80s (AP) 12/31/2004 08:43 PM
AP - A British medical journal said Friday it had given U.S. regulators confidential drug company documents suggesting a link between the popular anti-depressant Prozac and a heightened risk of suicide attempts and violence.

Schaeffer's Daily Market Blog Features
Hot Topic, General Electric, General
Motors, Eli Lilly, Apple Computer

Schaeffer's Daily Market Blog Features
Hot Topic, General Electric, General
Motors, Eli Lilly, Apple Computer 04/15/2005 06:51 PM
Business Wire UK Apr 15 2005 11:04PM GMT

Search Engine Marketing Company Buys
Santa Fe, New Mexico Web Development
Company

Search Engine Marketing Company Buys
Santa Fe, New Mexico Web Development
Company 03/30/2005 04:01 AM
Trafficdeveloper LLC, a Santa Fe, NM based search marketing company, is pleased to announce they have recently purchased Panorama Point Corporation, a well known Santa Fe, New Mexico based Web Development firm. [PRWEB Mar 30, 2005]

printCure Enables Direct Selling
Organizations to Offer their
Company-Branded Printed and Promotional
Products to Distributors "In-the-Field"
Through Same Web-Enabled Company Store

printCure Enables Direct Selling
Organizations to Offer their
Company-Branded Printed and Promotional
Products to Distributors "In-the-Field"
Through Same Web-Enabled Company Store 06/14/2004 06:32 AM
printCure, the cure for corporate procurement, can now be considered a "one-stop-shop" for direct selling organizations looking to automate, control, manage and consolidate the way they distribute their company's brandable print and promotional products to distributors and representatives who are in the field. [PRWEB Jun 14, 2004]

Sinotrading, an American Owned and
Operated Import/Export (Sourcing)
Company, Will Begin Training
Translators, Web Developers and Company
Executives From Chinese Manufacturing
Companies

Sinotrading, an American Owned and
Operated Import/Export (Sourcing)
Company, Will Begin Training
Translators, Web Developers and Company
Executives From Chinese Manufacturing
Companies 04/01/2005 08:57 AM
How to market to American companies thorugh the Internet in the complex world of e-commerce will be the seminar topic for Chinese company executives. [PRWEB Apr 1, 2005]

Summer Giveaway!

Summer Giveaway! 06/28/2004 07:00 AM

Google Giveaway

Google Giveaway 07/16/2004 11:56 AM

Earlier this week, Google announced they were purchasing Picasa, the excellent photo organization program. Well, now they're giving it away. If you are still looking for a good (and free) way to organize your pile of digital photos go get it. It has a great interface and does most of what Photoshop Album does. Actually, looking at the interface makes me wonder how this is not an OS X app.

I see a couple of things happening here. First, Google will probably tie this into the next version of blogger which they also own. No doubt posting to your blogger account will be a standard option in the next version of Picasa. Secondly, they are using that same user base to increase sales of the next version of Picasa which I believe is already under development. Works for drug dealers. Give em' a little for free and wait for them to pay when they want more.

Go give it a try. You won't be disappointed.

Click here to comment on this entry

The Great Giveaway

The Great Giveaway 04/12/2005 09:03 PM

I ran into this great article in Busienss 2.0 on open APIs and the benefits that Amazon, eBay and Google see from them.

It's particularly timely - as I'm in Seoul Korea pitching. I'm trying to convince this huge company to spend all this money and then giveaway all the code - to us. It's just so obvious to me - why they should pursue this strategy - but the challenge - of course - is to make it obvious to them.

I see this as my job right now - crusading the notion of open source infrastructure. I can just taste it.

Pepsi iPod Giveaway?

Pepsi iPod Giveaway? 12/16/2003 07:38 PM
iPodLounge notes that Pepsi has recently purchased 600 Exo Cases from Lajo. According to the Lajo, "this marks the beginning of companies like Peps...

Gmail Account Giveaway

Gmail Account Giveaway 04/02/2005 03:55 PM

Over the past few months we have given away over 500 Gmail account to readers here at Geek News Central. If you are new reader and need an account send request to geeknews@gmail.com

Gmail Giveaway Round 6

Gmail Giveaway Round 6 04/15/2005 12:37 PM

If you are in need of a Gmail account, I am ready to start giving away the next batch of accounts. Send e-mail to geeknews@gmail.com

Apache Week giveaway

Apache Week giveaway 01/09/2004 10:09 PM
Congratulations to the four winners of Practical mod_perl

Modding Mania Giveaway

Modding Mania Giveaway 08/27/2004 02:04 PM

Mousedroid OTC Poster Giveaway

Mousedroid OTC Poster Giveaway 08/02/2004 12:05 PM
There's only a few hours left to enter the Hasbro Original Trilogy Collection poster giveaway at Mousedroid.com. If yo uare a resident of Australia or New Zealand and have joined their forums then just answer the fanboy question to stand a chance of winning.

The Joy of Tech's Mac Gaming Giveaway

The Joy of Tech's Mac Gaming Giveaway 04/08/2005 05:25 AM
Hey MacMercs! Join Nitrozac and I as we celebrate original Mac games with a spe cial giveaway. In conjunction with Freeverse, we are giving away ten registrations of the insanely great AirBurst Extreme and Kill Monty. Entering is easy, all you have to do is post a reply to a thread, and you're in! We'll be randomly drawing names from the people who post, and they will be the lucky winners. Giveaway ends on Tuesday April 12 at 6PM Pacific time... good luck!

Pacific Rim Cases Giveaway

Pacific Rim Cases Giveaway 09/24/2004 07:55 AM

So it's Friday. We'd all rather be doing something else but we've got, like, eight more hours to go. So how about a contest? Pacific Rim Technologies has ponied up 20 prize codes redeemable for one of their gadget cases and we're going to give them away throughout the day. (If you remember the DiscHub contest, it'll be just like that). And PacRim has cases for all sorts of different things, including iPods and Treos and Pocket PCs, so there's a good chance there's something in there that you'll like.

Details after the jump.

TeamDFI Motherboard Giveaway

TeamDFI Motherboard Giveaway 08/07/2004 10:24 AM

Intelforums Xmas Giveaway!

Intelforums Xmas Giveaway! 12/02/2003 12:38 AM

MacDesign EyeHome Giveaway

MacDesign EyeHome Giveaway 03/14/2005 06:08 PM
Our friends at MacDesign and Elgato are giving away an Eyehome to one lucky winner. What does it do?

EyeHome allows you to access the digital content you have stored on your Mac - photos, music, video, movies - and enjoy it on your TV and home entertainment system.

You can register for the giveaway until the end of the month. The unit is valued at $199.

Corporations Entering World of Blogs (AP)

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